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Haulage heel Steve Reynolds, played by Richard Dix, is a trucker guy who falls foul of a scheme that he uncovers from what seems like a series of accidents, and may in fact just be that, a series of accidents.
Indeed and for whatever reason, there are questions unanswered at the conclusion of this tale, possibly the greatest of these being why is this film called The Thirteenth Hour, and what is the thirteenth hour and what in fact is it the thirteenth hour of?
The Whistler's voiceover speaks to Steve the trucker in this weird and morally dismal film noir serial caper. The character of The Whistler, which is a kind of personification of film noir values and habits, does in fact speak via voiceover, usually to the audience, and always commencing the picture by saying:
I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes... I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak!
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It is an enticing combination of statements and factors, emphasising with surety the real life noirism that the strange things that take place in the world do so take place at night, which is the time that The Whistler walks.
These strange tales do in fact come from the shadows, as noir tales must, but they are not supernatural even if they may seem so.
Which brings us to the other great unanswered question from The Thirteenth Hour (1947): what happened to the hitchhiker?
Early in The Thirteenth Hour (1947) when the strangeness is being set up and Steve the Trucker is being drawn into his fateful diamond smuggling and car jacking adventures, he picks up a hitch hiker in his truck — something he never does.
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This may be expected to have some meaning in the film and its unrolling action, but it does not. The stranger simply disappears and is never seen again. Perhaps this stranger is supposed to be a weird and semi-supernatural sign of fate itself, but he carries nothing but normality and does not say or do anything strange nor weird.
The only act of note that takes place during Steve's brief few moments with the hitch hiker are that the hitch hiker lights his cigarette out of Steve the Trucker's pipe, something you don't see very often in the super smoke saturated world of film noir.
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| Male bonding with cigarettes and pipe in truck noir The Thirteenth Hour (1947) |
In The 13th Hour, Richard Dix reprises no roles other than his same facial doubt and handsome and rugged hangdog staring at the floor or the wall, and stars as Steve Reynolds, a trucking company owner who finds his life unravelling just after getting engaged to diner owner Eileen Blair.
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The film begins with Steve celebrating his engagement by having a single alcoholic drink, after which he picks up a hitchhiker in a moment of goodwill. This seemingly innocent decision places him at the wrong place at the wrong time—on a collision course with a reckless driver. To avoid hitting the driver, Steve swerves and crashes into a gas station, but the reckless driver disappears without a trace.
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This is the character that is never seen again. It's strange but this is a short script, and perhaps the disappearance is indicative of something more profound than we are normally treated to.
Steve's troubles compound when a resentful cop, envious of Steve’s relationship with Eileen, charges him with drunk driving. Steve’s only witness, the hitchhiker, mysteriously vanishes, leaving no evidence that he ever existed. This eerie twist adds a Twilight Zone-like mystery element of either supernatural or super-weirdismal fantasy to the story. Sometime people disappear completely, but only when maddened noir leads go mad an imagine this.
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This weird and dismal atmosphere is exactly that described by the coinage weirdismal, a word admirably suited to this strange and twisting ever-expanding film noir universe of adventure, deceit and cruelty.
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The Thirteenth Hour marked Richard Dix's seventh and final appearance in the Whistler film series, and it stands as a fitting, if not exceptional, conclusion to his involvement. Retiring shortly after, Dix passed away just two years later, making this film a significant part of his legacy. Like the other entries in the series, The Thirteenth Hour operates within the constraints of a tight Columbia B-picture budget, but it makes the most of its atmospheric sets, evocative photography, and twist-laden plot.
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Eileen who owns a truck stop café, and who is played by Karen Morley, has a lovely and quite charming and smart teenage son played by Mark Dennis who has a pretty decent role in the film, and was 14 at this time and had appeared in one film the year before.
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| Richard Dix in The Thirteenth Hour (1947) |
This strange and shifting story follows Dix as an honest truck firm owner who suddenly finds himself wrongly accused of causing damage while driving under the influence — though he's innocent of everything other than having had the one celebratory bevvy, which does not effect his performance as a driver. This is not the opinion of traffic cop and motocycle fuzz Regis Toomey, who gets a decent crushing at an early juncture.
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True to the The Whistler formula, things spiral from bad to weird to weirder and then to worse, before moving into terrible, and Dix’s character Steve the Trucker, now a wanted murderer, spends most of the film hiding behind things as he makes efforts to clear his name. For fans of the The Whistler series, the big twist may be predictable, but a subsequent, smaller twist adds a decent surprise.
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| This book appears in several of the The Whistler movies |
Memorable scenes include the moody, atmospheric shots outside Eileen's café and the tense climax at Mabel's apartment, though the ending might feel a bit clichéd in terms of its film noir gunpoint finale style ensemble cast exertions . Despite this, the film remains a decent entry in the series, embodying the classic B-movie charm of the era and playing maddeningly with reality and the possibility that anything may ever be normal at the cinema.
Although Dix's departure marked the end of an era, of sorts, a short era perhaps, and a seven film kind of an era, which is quite short, one more Whistler film was produced without him. While it wasn’t quite the same, the seven films starring Dix remain the core of the series and are well worth watching for those who appreciate a time when black-and-white mystery films delivered suspense without relying on exploitation.
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As Steve tries to clear his name, and hides in various places, his situation spirals out of control. He is framed for murder, and his attempts to escape only make him look more guilty.
Richard Dix does manage to excel in this role, although to a degree he is always the same in each The Whistler film, starting one way, but usually morphing into a fate-petitioned wreck caught in a fraught bind of some kind.
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| Regis Toomey in The Thirteenth Hour (1947) |
He portrays Steve as a straight-laced, honest man caught in a web of unfortunate circumstances, which is a fair-enough film noir construct. Unlike some of his previous Whistler characters, who often inhabited moral gray areas, Steve is a clear-cut normal habitual regular straight-up good guy ensnared in a nightmare scenario. There is as with other Whistler fare, only a touch of the uncanny in this tight, entertaining B-movie package.
The ending is happy, and happy for a film noir, as well as happy compared to the average Whistler tale, and The Whistler tells us this, saying: "yes, Steve, fate was kind" and then whistling some more, with little sign of the disappointment he should perhaps feel that the bad people are consigned to death and prison, and the good people given money.
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The Thirteenth Hour (1947)
Directed by William Clemens
Genres - Crime, Mystery-Suspense | Sub-Genres - Film Noir | Release Date - Feb 6, 1947 | Run Time - 65 min
